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Former OHLer Milan Doczy denied educational scholarship funding

The moment Milan Doczy placed a pen on the contract that would make him an Ontario Hockey League player at 17 years of age remains frozen in his mind.

He’d just arrived in Ontario after a tearful goodbye with family and friends in his native Czech Republic.

It was his first trip outside his country. He spoke and read no English. His parents were thousands of kilometres away. There was no interpreter to help him understand the document laying before him.

He recalls the yellow and red stickers placed next to each line on the contract where his signature was required.

“Sign here,” he was told one morning before practice at the Bayshore arena in Owen Sound. “And here.”

That contract, signed Sept. 12, 2010, awarded him $65 a week as a player with the Owen Sound Attack (increasing to $150 a week in his final year).

He didn’t know much else.

Unlike contracts signed by Canadian players, his says nothing about the league’s educational scholarship program for former players — money he says has been unfairly denied to him.

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“In the hockey business, they say they’ll help you. But they never do,” said Doczy, now living in St. Catharines. “They said they’d pay. They didn’t.”

OHL commissioner David Branch said the scholarship program wasn’t made available to Europeans until this past June when Doczy’s appeal for funding reached the league’s attention.

The league quietly changed the policy to include Europeans.

But no one told Doczy.

“Based on his profile as I know it, he will be eligible under the scholarship program,” said Branch. “What’s right is right and that’s what we’re trying to do here.”

Ted Baker, vice-president of the OHL, originally spoke with Doczy a year ago about the player’s request for scholarship funding.

It was a unique case — very few Europeans apply for the scholarship funding after their playing days in Ontario, he says. And the rule in place at the time made Doczy ineligible.

“Bottom line, there wasn’t a scholarship available to him. That has been adjusted and rightly so.”

Owen Sound GM Dale DeGray said Doczy was the first European to ever request educational funding in his six years with the team.

“It was uncharted waters. He’s the pioneer. If there’s loopholes or a crack, if it comes to light and you don’t’ try to make good, you’re doomed for failure.”

It’s all news to Doczy who has been struggling financially without the funding he thought he’d earned.

“This would be life changing,” he said Friday after being told of the league’s response. “Let’s hope its going to work out. Maybe because (the Star) got involved they changed their minds. I’m sure I wouldn’t get the money on my own.”

In the aftermath of a scandalized collapse last week of a union drive to represent the league’s 1,300 players, Doczy says his case is testament to how vulnerable young players need strong advocacy.

And it needs to start from the moment they sign their contracts, he says.

While the “Standard Player Agreement Form” Doczy signed warned prospective players to seek legal advice before signing, that never happened for him.

Instead, his signature appears beneath a “waiver” that reads: “The Player has decided not to obtain (independent legal) advice.”

“I don’t remember being told that and I wouldn’t have understood it anyway,” says Doczy. “I was showed a contract and told, ‘You’ve got to sign this to play.’ So I did. It was the only way to play in the league and get drafted into the NHL.”

The names of his mother and father are handwritten into the contract to indicate they understand and acknowledged the terms and conditions. But they were a continent away.

Doczy wrote the two names into the document himself, he says.

The Attack’s DeGray said the club generally deals with player agents and that Doczy had an agent at the time he signed the deal.

“If he didn’t know it’s because it was lost in translation with his agent.”

Dozcy says his Los Angeles-based agent said nothing about a contract to him, never reviewed it or offered him advice.

But at the time, none of that seemed consequential.

This was his big moment.

He stood in the promised land of the game he fell in love with as a 6-year-old. In Canada, he would make his name. He would seek a destiny that now seemed within reach: Being drafted into the NHL.

“You’re in a bubble. Everybody thinks they’re going to make it.”

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In his first year, his coaches and agent said he’d be drafted “for sure in the first three rounds,” he says.

It didn’t happen.

Five years later, the broad-chested, 6-foot-5 defenceman resents the fact that his contract was missing the promise of educational scholarship funding after his playing days were over.

The OHL has long offered educational financial support to North American players who want to transition to college or university.

To be eligible, they must enroll in a program within 18 months of leaving the OHL, study full-time and continue to meet academic requirements.

After three seasons with the Owen Sound Attack — 2007 to 2010 — Doczy decided to return to the Czech Republic and play one more season of hockey. It didn’t go well.

After a few exhibition games with the Trinec Ocelari, he was cut and turned his attention to education.

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“We gave him credit for having the courage to come back here,” says Tracy Walker, who, along with husband Sean, billeted Doczy in their home for three seasons.

“We’re so proud of him because he really works hard and appreciates the education system here.”

He thought he had an advantage in Canada: a scholarship program that many of his teammates were using to fund their educations.

It was money he’d earned, he thought.

So as he was completing his high school equivalency credits in Owen Sound, he contacted his former team and the OHL to ask for the funding to begin a university or college business program.

He applied for the money within the eligibility period.

Promises were made, he says. Then, his calls went unreturned.

When word of a Canadian Hockey League Players’ Association — a proposed union to represent CHL players — emerged this fall, Doczy approached them for help with the help of his friend Vicky Grygar.

“They told me Milan is entitled to receive this money because he signed that contract as a 17-year-old minor with no witness present, no lawyer present and he didn’t understand the language,” says Grygar, a Masters student at Brock University writing her thesis on the rights of CHL players.

Hope of a union-backed bid for the funding disintegrated last week when the proposed union collapsed.

“It’s really funny that (the OHL) offers this now after two years,” she said Friday. “I’ve never heard this response until (the Star) got a hold of it.”

Doczy wants to become a Canadian citizen. Study business. Start a company. Contribute.

After being denied the educational funding, he was desperate to remain in Canada.

His parents back home wanted to help. But with modest Czech incomes, there’s no money to spare.

Others came forward to help. Grygar’s parents offered free room and board in their St. Catharines home.

They aren’t well off themselves. But they know his story well.

The couple immigrated to Canada from the Czech Republic in 1987 with a single suitcase in hand. They came for the same reasons Doczy now wants to stay.

“We try to help,” says Richard Grygar, a welder who has put in overtime to pay the extra expenses. “He eats like a horse. But who is going to help this guy? Nobody.”

Brock University pitched in by waiving the hefty tuition fees he would normally have to pay as an international student.

For now, he’s playing hockey with Brock, taking three classes and maintaining the 70s average he needs to earn a $4,000 scholarship.

It’s not nearly enough, of course. And the delicate financial balance may not have held out for four years of education, Doczy said.

While the 18-month window for claiming its educational scholarship expired for him months ago, Branch said that restriction can be overlooked in this case.

And the OHL’s Baker said that if Doczy is approved for the scholarship funding, the league would include retroactive payments for his Brock fees.

Doczy’s view on the game he once loved — the game that drew him to Canada — has changed over his time here. He doesn’t watch hockey on television anymore.

He doesn’t want to be involved at all when his playing days at Brock are over.

“I hate the business part of it. They don’t treat you as a person. It’s just not right.”

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